Casting Sticks

This series began a few winters ago when I started photographing twigs, branches, and other elements of nature lying on snow-covered ground.

Utilizing a digital process that mimics lith printing—an infectious development technique that intensifies the dark areas of an image to create high-contrast prints that resemble charcoal drawings— to create stark, monochromatic compositions.

Like tea leaves settling at the bottom of a cup or clouds drifting across the sky, the images suggest moods, feelings, or impulses that connect my personal reflections with the broader wisdom of nature.

I often wonder what my maternal grandmother, Jesse Scott Robinson, who claimed to have Romani blood and would tell the fortunes of friends and family, would make of these images and their stories.

What if the Wind were a Witch
(Tarot Influence: The Moon)

What if the wind were a witch? Perhaps it is. After all, we can’t see the wind itself; we only see what it touches, moves and stirs. The same is true for ideas, insight, fate, and even spells! There are many things we can’t see directly but whose effects can be experienced.

Like the Moon card in the Tarot deck, this image reminds us that there are unseen forces guiding events in ways we can’t imagine. The Moon speaks to illusion, mystery, and the power of intuition—just as the wind whispers of energies beyond our sight.

As the moonlight illuminates the night and hints at deeper truths, these natural forces, imperceptible to our five senses, exert their presence in the world around us. This image asks us to trust what we cannot see. Just as the wind’s invisible energy reveals itself in the swaying branches, unseen powers weave an invisible thread through our lives; joining, connecting, and influencing events in subtle, magical ways.